Just a quick note today's episode contains some descriptions of violence.

This is 99% invisible. I'm Roman Mars.

Priceless cultural artifacts have been plundered and sold for hundreds of years.

You can find these relics in museums and in private collections.

But in 2014, researchers discovered that looters had a new tool in the

trade of stolen antiquities.

Facebook groups with as many as a hundred000 members are devoted to the selling and

buying of cultural artifacts. There items can go for thousands, even tens of

thousands of dollars. Producer Zena Dowdard.

A study of the Facebook listings found that nearly a third of the artifacts were stolen

from conflict zones.

International treaties such as the 1970 UNESCO Convention

criminalized the purchase and sale of looted treasures.

But even so at the time, none of this was technically against Facebook's guidelines.

And Facebook isn't the only place with a market for traffic antiquities.

Do a search on eBay using the vague buzzwords of the industry, words like Mesopotamian or Byzantine, and you can come up with all sorts of listings too.

Here are just a few. Near Eastern Mesopotamian Terracotta plaque, $750.

Circa Mesopotamian finely carved black stone bull, $623.

Museum quality original ancient plaque relief of Ishtar, the Mesopotamian goddess, $3,000.

It's hard to know whether or not these specific items were looted from the Middle East but we do know this.

One of the organizations responsible for the pillaged artifacts floating around the internet is

ISIS.

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